


Small Epiphanies

by mindwalker



Category: Fringe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:04:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindwalker/pseuds/mindwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of partners, trust and uncanny parallels in their lives. Lincoln gets faces and backstory for the names in the files and Olivia has too many dead men to keep track of. [Somewhere inbetween season start and 4x06 Fringe division agents have The Talk about first shapeshifters.]<br/>She might be paranoid, but don't you imply she doesn't have good reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Epiphanies

> _“You said, she’s a paranoiac who doesn’t trust anyone.”  
>  “That doesn’t mean she’s not right.”_

 

_You want a revelation,_  
 _You want to make it right._  
 _But that’s a conversation I just can’t have tonight._

 

Files from the first shapeshifter case are strewn on the far edge of the desk, away from the later ones. Non-descriptive words of a person not really understanding what he’s just faced. Pictures of the dead look more normal than most of what he’d already seen in Fringe documentation. Two men, one woman dead — not nearly as devastating as this new species they’ve encountered.

Olivia, who approached unnoticed, reaches into her breast pocket and places something over the file. A photograph, two people on a busy street. The woman he knows — it’s Olivia, unburdened and laughing, a visage alien to him.

The man is the dead shapeshifter.

Lincoln curses in his head, not daring to breach the silence.

 

 

“Maybe we should come up with code words or something. As an infiltration check.”

“Perhaps,” Olivia shrugs. “But how do you know right now that I haven’t been replaced? That I’m not a shapeshifter?”

There’s a smile in the corners of Lincoln’s mouth. “I don’t. But I trust you.”

He wants to turn it into a joke. She smiles ruefully. “And that’s exactly the problem. Where I got caught. Charlie Francis was killed for no other reason than being my friend. I didn’t doubt him, I told him everything without a second thought, and that made him a convenient face to steal.”

Lincoln pauses to digest the information that still hasn’t quite settled in his head. It’s one thing to read about people he's never met. It’s a whole different story when he sees the proof of a bond he can grasp but has no words for.

The report says Olivia was the one to put it down.

“…Agent Francis. Right. Sorry.”

“No. Don’t,” Olivia shakes her head and looks to the side. “I have a lot of dead men to keep track of.

“My point is, Lincoln… We never suspected a thing. Not once. Right until he — that thing — almost… I killed it.”

His face numbs with not-quite-pity; he’s connecting the dots. He half-recalls, half-constructs from imagination — the surreal horror of shooting a familiar face, someone you trusted to have your back revealed as an enemy. He doesn’t offer his condolences. Pitying Olivia Dunham would feel like cheapening her resolve, diminishing her efforts. Instead, he says: “’Sorry’ is an inadequate word.”

“No,” she says. Lincoln is the type to ponder about proper expressions and meanings and personal space, and this time he feels they’ve tangled themselves in misused phonetics. Maybe she understands and his message carried across. Or maybe she just wants to brush It off, get to the point and cut this conversation short. “So don’t believe me just because I say so.”

Lincoln stays silent for a time. He’s uncomfortable as well, digging Olivia’s old (and apparently never quite healed) wounds. When they first met he thought her uncaring and invincible. Seeing her weak and human pains him for some reason.

“But isn’t that what being partners is about?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s true. Just sometimes rules go straight out the window.” _And people are not what you think they are._

He thinks of Agent Scott who was never proven a traitor (or otherwise), of Agent Francis and Olivia herself replaced with mirror lookalikes. He wants to believe he would have known. He wants to reach out and make it right somehow.

But this is Olivia Dunham, an agent who worked the travesties of Fringe cases for three years alone, the woman who carries a picture of a man (whose death she blames on herself) in her card holder. It tells things about her, volumes Lincoln doesn’t want to analyze.

He says nothing and passes her the photo back.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm convinced those issues had to be addressed sometime. And maybe they even will be, but it doesn't feel like the show's going to spend any more time sketching the Amberverse!past.
> 
> Lyrics borrowed from Florence + the Machine "No Light", foreword quote from episode 4x08.


End file.
